Many NoSQL databases come with a focus on performance, availability and scalability, sacrificing strong consistency guarantees along the way. In effect, this shifts the burden of providing consistency to the application, and often results in complex and error-prone application logic. Just a few years ago, an intense effort by Google resulted in Spanner - a globally distributed, replicated datastore that puts transactions back where they belong: right into the heart of the database.

CockroachDB is a grass-roots effort to bring to the table the guarantees of Spanner (and more) in an open source scalable database that is easy to deploy and, despite the name, quite attractive to have around. In the talk, I'll introduce you to the team behind CockroachDB and the current state of the art, briefly discuss consistency & Spanner and then dive into a tour of what's under the hood.